


bring him home

by Cowardly_Cabbage



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: buzzfeed unsolved levels of jackassery, just hermann being shane, yelling at the demons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-04 18:47:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16352162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cowardly_Cabbage/pseuds/Cowardly_Cabbage
Summary: I wanted to write something where Hermann just channels Shane's energy in buzzfeed unsolved to tell the Precursors to gtfo and naturally it got out of hand





	bring him home

**Author's Note:**

> it actually has nothing to do with Les Mis I just thought the song title worked and yes I quoted The Last Jedi fight me

       Dr. Hermann Gottlieb was angry. He’d spent the last ten years feeling lost, betrayed, confused, lonely, melancholy, dejected, hurt, frightened, anxious, depressed, and above all, sad. Too many unanswered questions had spent the past decade hanging like a storm cloud over the good doctor’s mind.  
What had happened between him and Newton Geizler? What had he missed? Why had Newton left him? What had he done wrong? What must he do to get Newt back?  
        But now the storm had finally broken, and all the questions were answered, and Dr. Gottlieb didn’t care at all for the answers. In fact, he hated them, and that hate had fast replaced his sadness with anger. The time for sorrow was over, anyway. The time for rage had come.  
       Dr. Gottlieb clung to that thought in the elevator, one hand clutching his cane and the other a tablet loaded with his reports, calculations, and predictions. That rage filled him with a boldness, a brashness, that he suspected was leftover from his drift with Dr. Geizler ten years prior. Since it was all he had left of Newton, Dr. Gottlieb clung to that too.  
       The elevator doors opened, and Dr. Gottlieb propelled himself down the hall to the conference room on willpower alone. Heaven knew that these past weeks of all-nighters in the lab had left his body exhausted, and truth be told if you asked him, Dr. Gottlieb likely couldn’t tell you when he’d last eaten. And it showed, too. His face, which had always been angular, was now drawn and shadowed. He leaned more heavily on that cane of his than he had in years. But that same face that was drawn with exhaustion was also set in stone determination, something that every occupant of that small, secret conference noted when he walked in. If anyone cared that he was late, they knew better than to say so. Dr. Gottlieb himself noted his tardiness, but the corner of his mind where Newton’s lackadaisical attitudes towards punctuality still lingered told him, “It’s alright dude, they can’t start without you anyway.”  
       As he took his seat in the last empty chair, Interim Marshall Jake Pentecost cleared his throat and stood up to address the half-dozen occupants of the cramped room. Dr. Geizler’s condition was top secret, so only a handful of people were permitted to be present. “We all know why we’re here today,” he began. “We’re hoping to establish a course of action for the, uh, ongoing issues with Dr. Geizler.” Jake had been named Interim Marshall on account of his actions on Mount Fuji, but you could tell that he wore that leadership more like an albatross than the glove it was for his father and sister.  
       “Say it like it is, Jake,” Ranger Nate Lambert sighed. It was no secret that he felt slighted by the Council’s decision to appoint Pentecost as Interim Marshall, given that Ranger Lambert had serve for much longer and with a much better record. But legacy names have always had clout, and it hadn’t been Nate on Mt. Fuji that day. “He’s an enemy spy and we’re keeping him in the basement with no idea of how to deal with him.”  
       “Incredible,” Dr. Gottlieb observed. “Every word of that sentence was wrong.”  
       “What is your assessment of the situation, Dr. Gottlieb?” Jake asked.  
       “For starters, he’s not an enemy spy,” Hermann shot Nate a venomous look. “His mind is held by the enemy, and there’s a stark difference. Furthermore, I happen to have some idea of how to help him.”  
       “And what is that?”  
       Hermann cleared his throat. “The Drift, as we know, functions through balance two separate sets of brainwaves. But imagine if one set were more powerful than the other; this is something we see when pilots chase the rabbit. However, those incidents are accidental and totally uncontrolled. If the stronger set of brainwaves knew what they were doing, and had a point and a goal in mind, they could suppress the weaker, and control them.”  
       “I’m hearing problems, not solutions, Doctor,” said some high-brow-PPDC-official-man or other that Dr. Gottlieb hadn’t bothered to learn the name of.  
       “We need to balance the scales,” Dr. Gottlieb announced. The room looked at him blankly, all except Liwen Shao. He hadn’t seen her when he first sat down, but now she was the only one regarding him with something besides utter confusion. “The Precursors have the full force of the hive-mind behind them; we need some extra brain power of our own.”  
       Realization dawned on Jake’s face. “You’re not suggesting-”  
       “Yes, Marshall, that’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”  
       “What are we talking about here?” Nate asked.  
       “He’s talking about someone Drifting with Dr. Geizler,” Shao answered softly. She’d become a shell of the woman she once was. A few weeks ago she’d been one of the most powerful people on the planet, able to command any and every room she set foot in. Now, guilt had consumed her, much like it had consumed Dr. Gottlieb. She wore a PPDC engineering uniform that hung loosely off of a rapidly thinning frame, and her hair that had once been so clean and styled remained an untamed mess.  
       “Not just anyone,” Hermann corrected. “Me, actually.”  
       Shao nodded in agreement. “Makes sense. Your experience drifting with Dr. Geizler will make it easier to reestablish the link.”  
       Marshall Pentectost finally found his tongue. “No, I won’t allow it! It’s way too dangerous- who knows what could happen to you-”  
       “I do,” Hermann snapped. “If we fail, my mind could shatter under the pressure, leaving me either brain dead or functionally insane. And that’s if the Precursors don’t figure out how to latch on to my brainwaves and follow me back from the Drift.”  
       “That’s a lot of “if”s, Doctor,” Nate observed.  
       “I’m well aware of the risks, Ranger,” Hermann replied. “But Newton is worth it to me, even if he’s not worth it to any of you.”  
       “No one is saying that,” Jake argued. “We just want to chose the safest course-”  
       “Marshall,” Dr. Gottlieb cut him off with all the restraint he could muster. “The brain that Dr. Geizler called “Alice” has been destroyed for weeks and we’ve seen no change. None of your tortures have worked in the slightest to bring Newt back. If all we risk in this operation is my mind, then it’s my choice, and I’m willing to do it.”  
       “It’s not just your choice! You are one of the top K-Science researchers in the world, Dr. Gottlieb!” Jake’s voice rang with the echo of his father’s terrifying authority. “Just because you want to play jackass with your brain does not mean that I am going to sacrifice one of our most valuable assets in this war!”  
       Hermann swallowed his tongue. Nate sat up a little straighter. Shao alone seemed unaffected by Jake’s sudden change in demeanor. “I could help,” she said softly, breaking the tension that hung in the silence following Jake’s outburst. “I’ve been working on the problem as well, and I think I’ve developed a way to isolate the conflicting brain waves. At the very least, we’d be able to monitor Dr. Gottlieb and pull him out if he’s under too much stress, not to mention we’ll be able to actually see the kaiju influence.” She glanced at Dr. Gottlieb, and he nodded in gratitude.  
       “Tell me this, Doctor,” Jake’s voice had lowered to its normal volume. “If I say no, what will you do?”  
       Jake pinned the doctor in his gaze, and Hermann knew he was being tested. So he squared his shoulders and told the truth. “I would do what I know Newton would do in my shoes. I would build a neural bridge from garbage and bring him home regardless.”  
       “Of course you would,” Jake smiled. “Then there’s nothing more for me to do. You and Shao do whatever you need to do to prepare. I want this over with as soon as possible.”

       The next three days were a flurry of preparations. Newton’s cell had to be rigged so that his brainwaves could be monitored without the Precursors knowledge, Hermann had to endure multiple variations of brain scans to ensure that any anomaly could be detected, and extra security precautions had to be put in place in case everything went completely sideways. Hermann wasn’t privy to that last one; if the Precursors infected his mind he couldn’t know how to escape. Mostly he worked with Shao, though they avoided speaking about anything that wasn’t numeric in nature. It was too strange. Besides, how could Hermann worry about what to say to Shao when he was so busy being worried about what he was going to say to Newt?  
       The night before it was supposed to happen, Hermann couldn’t sleep. Not that he’d been sleeping particularly well beforehand, but this was something else. He closed his eyes and all he could see was Newton’s face. Newton’s face the first time they met- wild eyed, maybe a little plumper than he’d been in the last days of the war. Newton’s face when Hermann found him that day in the lab, slack and pale. Newton’s face the day they’d cancelled the apocalypse, drunk and ecstatic. Newton’s face the day he’d left the PPDC, hurt and betrayed, angry and sad. (How much of that had been Newt? How much had been them? When did that line begin to blur?) And most hauntingly, Newton’s face when he was not Newton, when he’d closed one fist around Hermann’s neck and hoisted him off the ground until the world began to darken.  
       That was it, Hermann realized. That’s what he should say to Shao.  
       By now it was around 3 am. The witching hour, Newt had called it, on such occasions when they found themselves working those odd hours in the lab. Newt believed that the normal rules of physics don’t apply during the witching hour. Hermann told him that that’s ridiculous, of course. The laws of physics don’t change based on some superfluous human time constraints. Newton had laughed at that, and without warning collapsed towards Hermann.  
       Hermann, in shock, dropped his cane and chalk and caught him, only to find that Newt was still laughing. Hermann had asked him what was so funny and he’d replied, “See Herm? You caught me, even though your physics says that your leg shouldn’t be able to hold us!” Hermann had scowled and dropped him, but Newton kept his feet, even scooping up Hermann’s cane as he straightened up. Hermann’s frowned at the memory- this must have been thirteen years ago, so why did he remember so clearly the look on Newton’s face when he handed back the cane? It was like Newton had something to say as he pressed the cane back into Hermann’s hand- something sad and hard to word. Then he’d smiled again and the look vanished as he talked all about strange things that happened during the witching hour in his university years.  
       The witching hour passed, and Hermann came to terms with the fact that he simply wasn’t going to sleep tonight. He was supposed to meet Shao at 0700 hours to prepare, which meant plenty of time to go for a walk. Dr. Gottlieb had always enjoyed walking, even though now with his leg those walks were considerably shorter than they once were. He dressed in simple trousers and a sweater- a “grandpa sweater” as Newt would call it- and slipped out of quarters. The few PPDC personnel on patrol at this hour gave him no trouble, and he made his way to the surface with ease.  
       Once there, he looked to the waterfront, where he’d intended to walk, and saw someone else there. A curiosity that did not feel like it belonged to Dr. Hermann Gottlieb urged him to go see who it was, and that curiosity was stronger than Hermann’s natural inclination to avoid others at all costs.  
As he drew near, Hermann saw that it was Liwen Shao. He regretted his decision to come this way instantly, and turned to go.  
       “Dr. Gottlieb.” It was not a question. Of course it wasn’t- people could recognize his limp a mile off. She didn’t turn to face him, just continued to lean out over the railing, looking at the water. The early morning breeze was brisk, and her long hair flew about her like a black cloud.  
       Knowing there was no turning back, Hermann sighed and joined her at the rail. “Ms. Shao,” he said as he settled next to her.  
       “We have the same problem,” she observed.  
       “Insomnia affects many people.”  
       “Not that.” She smiled a small, sad smile. “We have something terrible in common and no idea how to talk to each other about it.”  
       “Oh,” Hermann’s face fell. Then he remembered. “No, actually I do have something to say to you.” He squared his shoulders towards her, and she matched his posture. “Thank you.”  
       “For what?”  
       “Had you not come when you did, there’s no telling what Newt- what _they_ may have done. Everything has been so mad since then that I never thanked you for probably saving my life, so thank you.”  
       Shao looked confused, an expression that Dr. Gottlieb had never seen cross her face before. “How can you thank me, after all I have done? Thanks to me, Dr. Geizler was able to carry out his plan, thanks to me the kaiju came back, thanks to me-”  
       “A man didn’t have to watch as his own hands choked the life out of someone he cares about,” Hermann interrupted. “That’s thanks to you, also. And all I care about.”  
       They were silent for a moment. “You are certain he still cares for you?”  
       Dr. Gottlieb sighed. “I saw the look in his eyes. His care for me was so strong that he was able to forestall the Precursor’s murder of me just long enough for you to arrive. I am certain of little, these days, but I am certain of this.”  
       “I’m glad. That may be the only thing that can save you today.” She glanced at him. “I’m sorry, that can’t be very encouraging to hear.”  
       “No, it’s not.” He smiled. “But it’s true. I saw the same data as you. Even if Newton’s mind was at its full strength, we couldn’t beat them on that strength alone. Emotion is the only area in which we excel.”  
       “Forgive me if I’m overstepping, but it doesn’t seem like that is your strong suit.”  
       Hermann remembered the witching hour all those years ago and the look on Newton’s face. “No, no it is not.”  
       “If it’s any consolation, emotions aren’t my strong suit either,” Shao told him.  
       They watched the sun rise in silence, felt the breeze grow warmer, heard the city come to life behind them. Time moved slowly, but not slowly enough.  
       “It’s time,” Shao announced. “Shall we go?”  
       “No use putting it off,” Hermann agreed.  
       

       Back in the Shatterdome, preparations were in full swing. Technicians bustled around, checking and double-checking every piece of equipment and all their fail-safes. Most personnel were under the impression that there was going to be an experimental drift with a kaiju brain; only those at the highest clearance levels knew the truth. Ranger Lambert was barking orders at the small squad of remaining cadets, ensuring that they were ready for anything. Hermann suggested breakfast, and Shao agreed, but the moment they sat down in the mess hall with their trays they found that they had no appetite. Between the two of them they managed to eat a single hard boiled egg and one slice of toast before shoving the food away in favor of tea. Black for Hermann, green for Liwen.   
       Marshall Pentecost found them at 0630. He didn’t look like his night had been much better than their own, and he herded them down to the detention level with more edge and anxiety than was typical for him. Not that they blamed him, of course. Once down there, Liwen joined her team in their final preparations, but there was nothing for Hermann to do but wait.  
       “How are you feeling?” Jake asked him.  
       “Indescribable, Marshall,” Dr. Gottlieb replied.  
       “You got a game plan once you’re in?”  
       “More or less.” Emphasis on the less, Hermann added silently.  
       One minute shy of 0700, Shao returned to them. “We’re ready for you.”  
       Hermann steeled himself. This, he thought, was going to be the hardest part. Early on he’d visited Newton a couple of times, but it had become much too hard on his soul. He found that he couldn’t bear to look at the Newton-Who-Was-Not-Newton for more than a few minutes before he felt like he was going to be sick. But in order for the neural bridge to work, they had to be in the same room, no two ways about it.  
       Two armed guards and two engineers carrying a chair between them led the way into the cell. Hermann hung back while the guards took up posts and the engineers set up the seat. Dr. Geizler was uncharacteristically quiet as he watched them work. It wasn’t until Hermann entered that a smile that wasn’t really a smile twisted his face.  
       “Come to try and rescue your precious Geizler again, Doctor?” Newton-Who-Was-Not-Newton spat. Hermann did his best to avoid eye contact as the guards checked Dr. Geizler’s restraints. “Oh, we do hope so,” Newton-Who-Was-Not-Newton continued. “We do love to watch you squirm. And he always screams just so, when he sees you.” Suddenly, Newt's breath caught, and Dr. Gottlieb broke, looking up at him. What he saw was Newton, just Newton, eyes too blue and full of fear. His lip trembled before he spoke, “You gotta get out of here, Herm, it’s not safe.”  
       “Newton-” Hermann reached out to him, but the moment he did Newton’s face twisted back into that smile-that-wasn’t-a-smile. Hermann recoiled his hand.  
       “So gullible,” Newton-Who-Was-Not-Newton sneered. “So desperate for your precious Doctor. What foolish plan do you have for us this time?”  
Hermann didn’t reply, instead letting the Precursors think about it for a bit as a cart of equipment was rolled into the room. They watched, through Newton Geizler’s eyes, as the headsets were put on each of them. They heard one of the guards apologize to Dr. Gottlieb as she strapped him down into his chair, for safety, you understand, Doctor, just in case, of course.  
       “Ha!” The Precursors burst out. “You intend to come to us? How exciting! We’ve been getting so bored with this one, it will be nice to have a new human to… to use.”  
       Jake Pentecost came in only once everything was set. He’d decided that if he was going to be responsible for this, he may as well be personally responsible for every part of it. "Dr. Gottlieb," he said. "Bring him home."  
       Hermann watched as Jake took up the switch, and just before the Drift was initiated he turned to Newton-Who-Was-Not-Newton. “Get ready Newt,” he said. “I’m coming for you.”

 

       It was well known that the Drift was blue. Not just blue- every shade of blue you could possibly imagine and then some. But usually, there was something to do, something to tie you back to the real world. That’s why Jaeger pilots, after that first rush of memories, are still able to fight in reality.  
       But when the Drift partners are seated, their bodies inactive and restrained, that consciousness can only exist within the mind, and that’s where Dr. Gottlieb now found himself. The last Drift was absolute energy, with Newt’s memories rushing through him and alien plans pounding his skull. This time there was an emptiness- as though the other minds were being held at bay. Hermann looked around and saw nothing but shades of blue, shifting like mist and shadow on a foggy day. But he had to be standing on something, right?  
       Hermann looked down, and around his feet a floor became visible. It was metal, and looked old, but it made no sound when he took a step forward. Looking around, more shapes began to become visible. Dark areas seemed to indicate walls, distant at first but growing closer. Plumes of blue smoke became tables, and suddenly Hermann recognized the room as the lab that he and Newton had shared at the Hong Kong Shatterdome.  
       Of course, he thought to himself. If there was one place that their minds would find common ground, it was here. As Hermann remembered the details (a lab counter here, a chalkboard there, the yellow line right down the middle, and so on) the room became more solid, albeit blue-tinted. The only thing that wouldn’t change was the ceiling, which remained a swirling mass of dark blue clouds, whose gaps let in little bits of light as though there was a blue sun shining behind them.  
       Down from the clouds came another puff of blue smoke, but unlike the furniture this one was moving. By the time arms and legs began to take shape, Hermann would have recognized that anxious pacing anywhere.  
       “Newton,” he breathed softly.  
       The cloud turned, at all at once he was completely solid and so very completely Newton. Newton, with those over-sized square glasses and that ridiculously skinny tie and even more ridiculously skinny jeans and the leather jacket he thought made him look so cool. Everything Hermann had wanted to say, every plan of action he’d made, fled from him as he was overwhelmed by the fact that he had never been happier to see anyone in his life.  
        But Newton didn’t look glad, he looked scared.  
       “Hermann what are you doing here, you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go now,” Newton closed the distance between them and tried to shove Hermann away, but Hermann caught his arms and held on with a grip that could crush steel. It was only now that Hermann realized he didn’t have his cane, nor was his leg bothering him in the slightest.  
       “Newton I’m not going anywhere without you,” he insisted.  
       Something rumbled like distant thunder, and the ceiling started to roil like the sea in a storm, and voices both too low and too high to be human spoke from all sides, “He’s ours. He belongs to us. We own him.” The voices repeated it, over and over again until they were overlapping each other and becoming all but incoherent.  
        “I don’t think so!” Dr. Gottlieb shouted at the sky, not knowing where else to direct his words and anger. Laughter echoed around them, but that only served to make Hermann all the more angry. “Newton Geizler is mine! If you want him, you’ll have to pry him from my cold, dead hands!”  
       Newt’s eyes widened. “Jesus Christ Herm-”  
       “No really,” Hermann went on, and suddenly was more confident in this course than he’d ever been of anything in his life. “Come down here and take him from me, if he really is yours! Except you can’t, because you’re nothing anymore! The brain is destroyed, you are weak and we know it! So by all means, filth, come here and fight me for him! I’m more than willing to take you on!”  
        Newton tugged on Hermann’s sleeve as the laughter turned to the dissonance of a deep growling and high-pitched hissing. “Herm, stop it! Please!”  
Hermann pried Newt’s hand off his sleeve so he could wrap his arm protectively around Newt’s shoulders. Something made of pure rage and mammalian instinct was directing Herman now, and there was nothing in this universe or the Anteverse that could stop him. “You have no power to stop me! If you did, you would have done it by now! All you can do is delay the inevitable, which is that myself and Newton Geizler are going home and there’s not a thing you can do to stop it!”  
       The hissing became a shrieking that pierced their ears, and the growling became a roar that rumbled so deep it felt like their sternums would shatter. A wind began to swirl around the lab, mixing the blue smoke of above with the memories of paper reports below. Without thinking, Newton drew into Hermann’s embrace until he was all but clinging to him.  
       “Go ahead and kill me, if you can!” Hermann raised his voice to be heard above the din. “It would make my day if you did! But you shan’t, because you can’t!” The Precursors must have hated rhymes, because the wind grew stronger, and the walls of the lab disappeared behind layers of blue mist rushing past too fast to see. Hermann had to practically scream to be heard. “Go ahead and howl, since you can’t even muster the power to face me, you cowards! Remember this as the day that you were bested by the mathematician Hermann Gottlieb! May your children sit it the dark and tell tales of me!”  
       When all it seemed like the sound would swallow them whole, their entire world went as dark and silent as the void of space. The only sensation either of them had was the feeling of the other right next to them, holding tight. Into the darkness, Dr. Hermann Gottlieb spat two final words: “Fuck you.”  
       There was one last piercing shriek, and the blue storm rushed in and swallowed the men whole as they clutched each other in desperation. The world shattered and then-

       Color burst back into being, filled with white and yellow light and they were jolting back to reality in the basement interrogation room.  
       The first sound that Hermann was consciously aware of was, of course, Newton shouting.  
       “You gotta check on him, come on please, I don’t care what you do with me but look at him he’s so not okay-”  
       “Newton I am fine,” Hermann grumbled. He wasn’t, of course. His skull was pounding and he felt that he might vomit any moment now. His attempt to hold his head in his hands was foiled when he realized he was still strapped down.  
       “Really?” Newton snapped, his voice breaking. “You’re fine? You’re the color of old paper, dude, not to mention-” Whatever Dr. Geizler intended to mention was lost as he heaved once, twice, and on the third time finally lost whatever sorry excuse for a meal he’d been given the evening prior. That, of course, set off Dr. Gottlieb, and his tea-and-toast combo was soon gone. Luckily, Shao had prepared for this, and large metal buckets had been placed beneath their chairs while they’d been under. It wasn’t an uncommon effect of unstable drifts, much like the bloody noses and sub-conjunctival hemorrhage. Both men were bleeding from their eyes, nose, and even ears, a phenomenon which hadn’t been recorded since the earliest Drifts. But then again, this wasn’t an average Drift.  
       “It’s a good sign,” Shao said, standing in a corner with Pentecost. “It means their systems are clearing out.”  
       “It looks awful,” Pentecost’s face screwed up in disgust.  
       “I assure you, Marshall, it feels worse,” Dr. Gottlieb told him between heaves.  
       Dr. Geizler had something considerably snarkier than that. “Why don’t you try it sometime, Jake, and see how you feel!”  
       “He certainly sounds like himself,” Pentecost observed.  
       “His readings are good,” Shao looked at the data on the tablet in her hand. “Traces of Kaiju brainwaves are rapidly decreasing.”  
       “Of course they’re decreasing!” Newton all but shrieked, his stomach now completely spent. “Hermann Jackass Gottlieb over hear told them to fuck off!”  
       Had Dr. Gottlieb’s face not already been reddened by the vomiting, he likely would have flushed at that. “I was under stress, Newton, I wasn’t thinking-”  
       “Oh, you weren’t thinking? You weren’t thinking about challenging the hive mind of an alien race to a fist-fight in my brain?”  
       “It was my brain too, as you well know-”  
       “They certainly seem to be acting like themselves,” Pentecost said to Shao with a smile he could barely contain. He remembered the way they used to be, just a little. There were times when he was growing up and he would visit his father at the Shatterdome. And since the senior Marshall Pentecost was a very busy man, more often than not Jake was left with Mako, who would show him around and introduce him to people. His only memory of the doctors was of them, just like this, bickering away, and seeing it before him after so many years made him happy in a way that he couldn’t put into words.  
       “We should monitor them for a few more days,” Shao said, pulling Jake back to the present. “Just to be sure.”  
       Jake was going to agree, but was cut off by Newton. “Yeah can you untie us first? Please? So we can stop puking on ourselves?”  
       “Newton, be reasonable,” Hermann snapped. “You’ve been howling about global destruction for weeks now- they’re not just going to let you go.”  
       “Did I ask to be let go, Hermann? No, I just want to be untied, is that so much to ask? Is it really?”  
       Jake and Liwen shared a glance and shrug, deciding as one that it was probably fine.  
       “Thank you, Liwen,” Hermann said quietly as she undid the straps about his wrists and ankles.  
       Now it was Shao’s turn to try and hold back a smile. “No, thank you.”  
       Meanwhile, Newton was apologizing to Jake. “Hey man, I’m sorry about all the world-ending stuff, I uh-”  
       “Listen, no one blames you,” Jake told him softly. “None of it was you, you know?”  
       Newton’s normally infallible energy faltered, and his voice dropped quieter than anyone thought he could speak. “How many people-”  
       “Don’t do that to yourself, man,” Jake cut him off. “It wasn’t you. Everyone here realizes that. I know it’ll be hard for you realize that, but know that we all just want to help you.”  
       A bit of the old Dr. Geizler came back in a wry smile. “And to pick my brain about the Precursor’s plans, right?”  
Jake smiled apologetically. “That too. But that can wait.” He straightened up, and addressed both Gottlieb and Geizler as one. “We’ll need to monitor you both for a while, make sure everything is alright. Ms. Shao here will run some tests, and then we’ll determine if you can be allowed to leave this room. Even if you are cleared to leave, know that you will be accompanied by armed guards at all times. You know, in case you start talking about ending the world again,” he added with a smile at Dr. Geizler. Newton smiled back while he rubbed at his sore wrists. In his body, the Precursors had fought the restraints, leaving his wrists red and raw and sore. It hurt, but Newton didn’t mind. How could he, when there were so many worse things that the Precursors had done with his body?  
       "And me?” Dr. Gottlieb asked.  
       “What part of what I just said did you not get, Dr. Gottlieb?” Jake snipped. “Both of you, stay here, and do as your told. I’ll have someone in soon so you two can clean up and get something to eat.”  
       Shao stepped out first, and Jake followed. “Bring us pizza!” Newt called after them. The door slammed, and Newton and Hermann were left alone.  
     

       “Why pizza?” Hermann broke the silence.  
       “I’ve been eating solely for sustenance for years,” Newt answered. He tried to stand, but found that his legs would not support him, so he fell back heavily into his chair and attempted to make it look like he’d just been shifting. Something clutched in his chest, but he laughed it off. “I need something greasy and terrible and I need it now.”  
       Hermann wrinkled his nose. “I never understood your obsession with that- I wouldn’t even call it food to be perfectly honest, it hardly sustains you-”  
       “It sustains my soul, man, I haven’t had a soul for a while,” his voice broke, but Dr. Geizler drew himself up and did his best to act as though it hadn’t happened.  
       But Hermann had waited far too long to hear his voice, his real voice, to let that slide. He stayed quiet, looking at Newt expectantly. Newt wouldn’t meet his eye, and eventually Hermann broke off his gaze, wondering if he was pushing too hard.  
       “I’m not a religious man, Newton,” Hermann told the floor. “But I think that if there’s one thing that what we’ve accomplished today proves, it’s that beyond a shadow of a doubt, you have a soul.”  
       “Tell that to the body count,” Newt replied dryly. Hermann opened his mouth to reply, but Newton cut him off. “And don’t tell me it’s not my fault, I don’t need any of that Good Will Hunting crap right now. It was my hands programming those drones, integrating the Kaiju DNA. Me that got the job with Shao and continued to lie to her and undermine her company. Not anyone else. Just me.”  
       “Not you,” Hermann corrected. “Them. Your body, but not your mind. Not your soul.”  
       “Herm that doesn’t matter-”  
       “Yes it does!” It was Hermann’s turn to interrupt now. “Did you want to do it?”  
       “No-”  
       “Then it wasn’t truly you. Your body, yes. Your hands, yes, but not you,” Hermann insisted. “They were controlling you.”  
       “But I let them!” Newton burst out. “I could have destroyed the brain before they controlled me completely, only I didn’t. I let them in. I threw the door wide open and let them play around in my head. What happened after is my fault.”  
       “Newton,” Hermann lowered his voice, struggling to regain control over his temper. “I saw the Drift records. You started slow, right? Then started drifting for longer and more frequently? It’s a drug, simple as that. They flooded your brain with dopamine and convinced you that it was good to keep drifting. Millions of people succumb to addiction, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”  
       “Millions of people don’t attempt global genocide,” Newt said bitterly. “Besides, if it’s so common, why didn’t it happen to you?”  
       “You drifted twice,” Hermann reminded him, becoming earnest in his theory. “I figured it out, Newt. After your first Drift, the Kaiju set up a trap for you. That rush you felt after the second drift? That was them getting their teeth in you. They weren’t prepared for me, so they focused their efforts-”  
       “Where are you getting this information?” Newt interrupted. “You been chatting with my Mr. Hyde? Because for better or for worse, I remember most of what they did with me.”  
       “It is largely,” Hermann swallowed. “Conjecture.”  
       Newt’s eyes went wide. “Be still my beating heart, Dr. Hermann Gottlieb, relying on CONJECTURE. No numbers, Herm? No handwriting of God? What’s become of you?”  
       “Alright, Newt, that’s more than enough-”  
       “I don’t think it is, I think we all need to spend a little longer talking about how Hermann Numbers-Are-God Gottlieb made a hypothesis based solely on conjecture!”  
       “Well I had to think of something!” Hermann burst out. “You- _they_ \- wouldn’t tell me anything, so I figured something out and ran with it. I needed some way to make sense of everything.”  
       Newt sighed heavily. “You and me both, man.”  
       Silence hung between them, heavy as summer air.  
       “How did you know it would work?” Newt asked.  
       “What would work?”  
       “Your Drift-rescue-mission.”  
       “Well,” Hermann shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “The work Liwen and I did-”  
       “On a first name basis now?”  
       “-the work we did showed that the only area in which human brainwaves were stronger than the hive mind was emotion.”  
       “Oh, because those have always been your strong suit.”  
       Hermann’s mouth became a tight line. “It was our only shot, so I made it work.”  
       “Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful,” Newt said. “But in order for the emotions to be stronger than the raw force of the hive mind- there had to be some serious emotional strength behind that.” Newton stared at Hermann, suddenly feeling like they were too close together and too far apart all at once.  
       “Well with our- history,” Hermann cleared his throat. “Of course there’s strength.”  
       “You’ve never even said you like being around me.”  
       “I assumed it went without saying.”  
       “So you do like me!”  
       “Like you-? I enjoy your company, is all.”  
       “That means you like me.”  
       "What does it matter?”  
       “You like me enough to fight the Kaiju hive mind-”  
       “We spent over ten years together-”  
       “So you must really like me-”  
       “After that amount of time-”  
       “Do you _like_ like me?”  
       “Newton for God’s sake I have no idea what any of that means!” Hermann burst out. “All I know is that living without you these past years was the hardest thing I’ve ever done and I couldn’t bear it another minute!”  
       Newton Geizler, for once in his life, was speechless. His hands, ever-fidgeting, even under Precursor control, stilled on the arms of his chair, resting on top of his restraints. His legs didn’t bounce, and anyone who knew him would think that they were looking at a Dr. Geizler who was frozen in time, because Dr. Geizler never ever held still, even for a moment.  
       To his credit, Hermann drew himself up and let his words hang without comment. To his discredit, he couldn’t look Newton in the eye, instead focusing intently on a steel-grey wall.  
       After what could have been an instant or an eternity, Newton broke the silence. “You don’t mean that, do you?”  
       “I have been called many things in my life,” Hermann replied stiffly. “But never a liar.”  
       “But you, you can’t- you can’t mean that.”  
       “And why not?”  
       “Because I- I-” Newton tried and failed to find words that made sense, that could possibly make this make sense.  
       “Newton if you bring up what the Precursors did with your body again I swear-”  
       “I’m insufferable!” Newt burst out. Hermann finally looked at him, not intentionally, but in surprise. He’d expected Newt to fall down that self-hating hole of what the Precursors had done, but not this. “I’m obnoxious and loud,” Newt continued. “And you yell at me all the time.”  
       “Well someone’s got to,” Hermann replied simply. “You say these things as if I don’t know them. I know you’re insufferable, Newton. I know you’re obnoxious and loud.”  
       “And?”  
       “And what?”  
       “And aren’t those usually uh, undesirable qualities?”  
      “Perhaps,” Hermann thought for a moment. “But then again, so are many of mine.”  
       Newt rolled his eyes. “Sure, being smart and funny are so undesirable. So what if you’re right all the time, even when I won’t admit it. So what if you always mutter your jokes so only I can hear, so that I’m the one that gets in trouble for laughing in the meetings and no one believes me when I tell them it was you.”  
       “As though it’s my fault you laugh so loudly and so easily.”  
       “Don’t change the subject!” Newt snapped.  
       Hermann sighed, trying to calm himself down. “What do you want me to say, Newton? If we are fond of each other that is only to be expected.”  
       “Woah, who said I was fond of you?”  
       “Please, you really think the strength of my feelings alone would be enough to defeat the hive mind? You know what they say: it takes two to tango.”  
       “What- what are you talking about?”  
       “And I thought I was the blind one,” Hermann muttered, absentmindedly massaging his bad knee. “Don’t think I never noticed you staring at me and smiling, looking away the moment you realized I could see you.” Hermann didn’t mention that sometimes he would see that look across the room on Newt’s face in the reflection of his own monitor. Newt didn’t know, couldn’t know, that Herm could see his face (on account of the angle) so he would stare, and Hermann would stare right back. What Hermann didn’t know, of course, was that Newt had seen the same thing in reverse, and he’d stared at Hermann’s face smiling in the reflection just the same.  
      “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Newton said stubbornly.  
      “Goodness gracious, Newt, we were in each other’s heads, it’s hardly possible to lie to one another at this point.”  
      “Security!” Newton called. “This man is harassing me! Where’s my pizza?” He got up and banged on the door, but received no answer.  
      “Why are you so reluctant to be honest with me, Newt?” Hermann snapped.   
       Newt spun around. “Why are you so insistent on lost causes?” he shot back. Hermann was taken aback, and faltered. Newton took advantage of the silence to continue. “Best case scenario, Herm, is I get life in an international prison. Or they give me the chair. Do they still use the chair? No they don’t. Maybe in Texas- anyway!” He interrupted himself, waving away his own digression as he paced the cell. “Point is, this-” Newt held out his arms to indicate their surroundings. “-this is the only future I got left. They’ll question me and study me and when they can’t get anything else from me they’ll throw me in a hole and swallow the key.”  
       “They can’t try you for crime you didn’t-” Hermann began.  
       “Oh yeah, because “the aliens made me do it” will hold up so well in court,” Newt snapped. “I’m done for, Herm, but you- you’re not.” He finally stopped pacing, and mustered the courage to face his friend. Friends? Could they call themselves that anymore? “You’ve saved the world twice over. Write a book. Retire in a seaside cottage. Get remarried. I bet Vanessa is just dying to have you back right about now.” Newton snorted miserably at that last bit.  
       Hermann braced himself on his cane and, with no small difficulty, heaved himself up. Newt reached out to help, only to stop himself and retreat his hand. But Hermann caught it, with the hand not white-knuckling his cane, and pulled it close to him. “I don’t want Vanessa back,” Hermann said. “I want you back.”  
        Despite himself, Newt’s hand tightened around Hermann’s. He wanted to push him away and pull him closer, he wanted to scream at him that he was different now, that everything was different and wrong, that maybe he can’t come back. But goddammit if the look in Hermann’s eyes made him want to believe that it was possible that everything would be okay. They’d write a book about saving the world and they’d sell millions of copies. They’d get a ridiculously small house on some cold, rocky beach in northern England. The kind of place where people in the shops would look at them and say, “Hey, you look a bit like those scientists who saved the world.” And they would chuckle and say that they got that a lot, and the strangers would wish them a good day and leave them alone. They’d wear sweaters all the time and drink tea, and Newt would plant a garden to keep busy while Hermann read dusty old books in a dusty old armchair. They’d go grey and dance to music only they could hear.  
        Just as Newton began to see it all come together, something ripped it all apart again. Something dark and foul and evil and Lovecraftian and gone from his head but not altogether. Newton suspected it never would be. He tried to drop Hermann’s hand, but Hermann wouldn’t let go. For an instant, there was a silent tug of war for Newton Geizler’s right hand. Then Hermann’s cane clattered to the ground and he seized Newt’s other hand, holding on ever tighter and forcing Newt to support his weight.  
       “Herm what-what are you doing?” Newt meant for it to come out loud and brash, like everything he said. A joke about how ridiculous it was for Hermann to drop his cane and hang off of Newt. But the words just came out soft and broken, sad and wavering.  
       “I just got you back,” Hermann said, his voice just as weak and vulnerable. “I’m not letting go again.” At that moment, his bad leg gave way, and Hermann’s knees buckled. But he didn’t fall. He didn’t fall because Newton held on and kept him standing. The Precursors had kept Newt’s body in prime shape, and at this moment alone was he glad of it. “You see?” Hermann said with a mischievous glint in his eye that few people ever saw. “You caught me.” His fingers twisted into the sleeves of Newt’s shirt, holding on as tightly as he was able.  
        Newt chuckled beside himself, and it was like the floodgates of stress opened up. Once he started, he couldn’t stop. Before he knew it, Hermann was laughing too, and neither of them knew why. They laughed and laughed and sank to their knees, holding each other closer and closer until their foreheads pressed together.

        And that’s how Interim Marshall Jake Pentecost, greasy pizza in hand, found them. The men who once saved the world giggling together on the floor of their cell as though nothing outside of their private moment existed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! These nerds have been on my mind a lot lately and reading fic about them got me through finals last year and now writing fic about them has gotten me through my first set of midterms


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